A History of the Rarer British BirdsLongman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman; and Houlston and Son, 1836 - 101 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Alauda Alpine Accentor Anser Arctic Arctic Tern Ardea Becfin Bechs Bechstein Bewick bill blueish breast Briss Brisson British Birds British Fauna British Isles Buff Canard Charadrius Cinerea cinereous colour Colymbus common Corvus Cuvier dark brown Duck dusky edged English Authors Eyton Falco Fauvette female Fleming Fringilla Gallinula Gmel Gmelin Godwit Gould Grebe grey Grise Grosbec Gull Heron hind toe Hirondelle Hirundo Iceland Gull inches Jenyns killed Lark Larus Lath Latham Leach legs length Lesser Redpole Lestris lighter Linn Linnæus Loxia male Mont Montagu Motacilla Mouette neck Nigra Nobis Noir Ornithology Pallas Penn Petit Petrel Pigeon plumage Pluvier Puffinus quills Redpole Rock Pigeon Sabine Sandpiper Scolopax Selby Shaw Snipe species specimen Spotted Stephens Sterna Strix SUB GENUS summer plumage Swainson Sylvia tail coverts tail feathers tarsi Temm Temminck Tern Tetrao throat tipped Titmouse Tringa Turdus Wils wing coverts winter Wren Yarrell Zoology
Popular passages
Page 31 - ... scarce a single vegetable made its appearance. When these roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants from considerable distances visit them in the night, with guns, clubs, long poles, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction. In a few hours they fill many sacks, and load their horses with them. By the Indians a pigeon roost, or breeding place, is considered an important source of national profit and dependence for that season ; and all their active ingenuity is exercised on...
Page 31 - These roosting places are always in the woods, and sometimes occupy a large extent of forest. When they have frequented one of these places for some time, the appearance it exhibits is surprising. The ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their dung...
Page 31 - ... the ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their dung, all the tender grass and underwood destroyed, the surface strewed with large limbs of trees, broken down by the weight of the birds clustering one above another, and the trees themselves, for thousands of acres, killed as completely as if girdled with an axe.
Page 23 - ... kowe kowe kowe, beginning slowly, but ending so rapidly, that the notes seem to run into each other; and vice versa : he will hear this frequently, without being able to discover the bird or animal from which it proceeds, as it is both shy and solitary, seeking always the thickest foliage for concealment. This is the yellow-billed cuckoo, the subject of the present account.
Page 31 - These roosting-places are always in the woods, and sometimes occupy a large extent of forest. When they have frequented one of these places for some time, the appearance it exhibits is surprising : the ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their dung, all the tender grass and underwood destroyed, the surface strewed with large limbs of trees, broken down by the weight of the birds...
Page 31 - In seasons when these nuts are abundant, corresponding multitudes of pigeons may be confidently expected. It sometimes happens that having consumed the whole produce of the beech trees in an extensive district, they discover another at the distance perhaps of sixty or eighty miles, to which they regularly repair every morning, and return as regularly in the course of the day, or in the evening, to their place of general rendezvous, or as it is usually called, the roosting place.
Page 30 - These fertile and extensive regions abound with the nutritious beech nut, which constitutes the chief food of the wild pigeon. In seasons when these nuts are abundant, corresponding multitudes of pigeons may be confidently expected. It sometimes happens that having consumed the whole produce of the beech trees in an extensive district, they discover another at the...
Page 32 - Animals,' shot at Westhall, in the parish of Monymeal, Fifeshire, on the 31st of December, 1825. The feathers were quite fresh and entire, like those of a wild bird. The specimen in question was presented to Dr. Fleming by the Rev. A. Esplin, schoolmaster at Monymeal.
Page 30 - I had then seen of them were mere straggling parties, when compared with the congregated millions which I have since beheld in our western forests, in the states of Ohio, Kentucky, and the Indiana territory. These fertile and extensive regions abound with the nutritious beech nut, which constitutes the chief food of the Wild Pigeon.
Page 2 - It always appeared to us most extraordinary, indeed unaccountable, that birds of prey could scent carcasses at such immense distances as they are said to do. We were led to scepticism on this subject some twenty years ago, while observing the concourse of birds of prey from every point of the horizon to a corpse floating down the river Ganges, and that during the north-east monsoon, when the wind blew steadily from one point of the compass for months in succession. It...